“I’ve been fortunate,” he said. “It’s not a big deal. It’s an inconvenience at times, but I’ve adjusted pretty well with it. I don’t have any fear with it.”

He trains at home on a treadmill.

“There are days I don’t like to train,” he said. “It does take a certain amount of discipline.”

In a marathon, a team of four guides leads him around the course, each taking a segment of the race. He is linked to his guides by two five-foot PVC pipes, the kind used in plumbing.

“They hold on one end and I hold on the other,” he said. “The pipe balances me. It feels like the treadmill. It’s probably psychological but it works out.”

His guide tells him his location on the course, or if there is a turn or a change in the surface, like a railroad crossing. Frequent irritations for him are reflectors cemented to the roadway that mark traffic lanes.

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“Those things in the middle of the road, my feet are like magnets; they find them,” he said, laughing.

“My biggest problem is I get so consumed with wanting to run well, and sometimes if I’m not running well it gets in my head and then I start pressing. And you can’t press.”

His best time is just over four hours.

Statistics are not kept on the number of marathon runners among the 1.3 million legally blind Americans. Mark Lucas, executive director of the United States Association of Blind Athletes, made an “educated guess” that it was fewer than 100.

The association has helped train blind athletes for more than 30 years and advocates for them to be allowed to compete with sighted people. The Paralympics record in the marathon for the class of runner who, like Gokey, is totally blind and is allowed to use up to four guides is 3 hours 3 minutes 48 seconds, set in 1988 by Rick Holborow of New Jersey.

“Having to run 26.2 miles as a blind person truly boggles my mind,” said Steven Karpas, director of marketing and race development for the Houston Marathon. “I have huge respect and admiration for Mr. Gokey.”

Gokey said spectators and runners often tell him the same.

“I think it’s fantastic,” Connie Almeida, one of his guides, said while training with Gokey a few days before the event. “I think he’s an inspiration to anybody, that you can get out there and do anything.”

One hazard in the often close quarters of a marathon is unwittingly getting in the way of others. Gokey remembers stepping on a woman’s foot a couple of times in the Sacramento Marathon a few years ago.

“She didn’t even look back but just said, ‘You blind or something?’ ”

He replied: “ ‘You know what? As a matter of fact. ...’

“My guide said it was great. When she finally looked back, she had that look like she just had stepped in something. Then she ran away.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page SP2 of the New York edition with the headline: Love of Running Keeps Blind Marathoner Going. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe